Someone to Care
by xxkattiaxx
Summary: Summary: It's not until one is surrounded by utter silence and complete isolation, one can truly appreciate the need for someone to care. This story is one of redemption and rebirth. SSxHG, Romance/Hurt/Comfort, Limony 'M' warning just to be safe.
1. Prologue

Someone to Care

.

.

.

Summary: It's not until one is surrounded by utter silence and complete isolation, one can truly appreciate the need for someone to care. This story is one of redemption and rebirth. SSxHG, Romance/Hurt/Comfort, Limony 'M' warning just to be safe.

.

.

.

Prologue:

.

.

.

 _ **Severus,**_

 _ **If this letter should find you, then two things have happened:**_

 _ **You have survived the coming war.**_

 _ **And Voldemort is defeated.**_

 _ **I write this instead of telling you because it is my belief you never would accept such consideration from me whilst I still yet live.**_

 _ **You have served her well, you have served me well, and you deserve a rest.**_

 _ **It is my hope you view this as a chance to find the peace you never have been able to attain these long years of dual service and duress.**_

 _ **As is, I have made provisions concerning your relocation and new identity.**_

 _ **You will find attached a key to a safety deposit box located in a muggle bank called the Queen's Arms in Yorkshire, number 147.**_

 _ **Further instruction awaits you there.**_

 _ **Your servant,**_

 _ **Albus Dumbledore**_

 _ **P.S. It was not my intention to make you a martyr, Severus. Neither was it Lily's.**_

 _ **Don't live like one.**_

 _ **A. D.**_

.

.

.

A/N: A review is a piece of chocolate to this authoress, and I'm jonesin' for a fix. Another update forthcoming soon for I'm anxious to 'get to the goods' so to speak.

-k


	2. Be Careful What You Wish For

Chapter 1— Be Careful What You Wish For

"Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because the enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them." -Jodi Picoult

.

.

.

Severus Snape was lonely.

Not that he would ever admit it to himself. No. He would deny it with his last remaining breath if he had to.

But yes, he was lonely.

He looked around the seedy little pub in the furthest reaches of Northern Wales in the town of Porthdinllaen. The bar keep was talking with one of the locals; Severus could barely understand them. It was hard to believe they were still speaking the Queen's English.

He had been here eight months, fourteen days, and he was considered what the townspeople referred to as an 'outlier'.

He doubted if he lived in Porthdinllaen for the rest of the days, the locals would ever include him as one of 'them', but that was fine with him. One didn't live on a little island that was only accessible via a two mile walk when the tide was low and the sea fair in order to become Mr. Society now did one? The place encouraged isolation.

And this—this was how he liked it.

Eight and a half months of pure and blissful isolation. It was what he had wanted. And yet, the old maxim held true: be careful what you wish for, for you just might get it.

Albus had certainly given him his wish, and it was hell.

When he had followed Albus's instructions and gone to the Queen's Arms and opened the safety deposit box, Severus had found the deed to a cottage as well as a transference of a sizeable sum of gold to the identity of Simon Templar. A wand bearing that appellation made by Ollivander at Dumbledore's behest was also in the box. Having had to abandon his old one in the shack, Severus had shaken his head at the old man's thoughtfulness. For the thousandth time he wondered how could Albus have known?

The deed was to a secret-kept cottage on the isolated island of Porthdinllaen, muggle population: forty-seven, magical population: zero. Ollivander was the secret keeper for one Simon Templar, not that the old wandmaker would know or remember. And so, the night of the final battle, Severus Snape had ceased to exist. And on the dawning of that new day, Simon Templar was born.

.

.

.

"Ye want anoother, Templar?"

Severus looked down at his scotch. He'd been nursing the one for quite a while, and the ice had melted. Casually, he tossed it back and shoved the tumbler to the barkeep.

" 'Poosed ta be quite col' this eve'n. Ole men li'e yer an' me, we feel t'chill' righ' een our boons, eh?" The bar keep laughed, plunking down Severus' drink in front of him. "Bu' would ye look'ee thar'? Bet she could keep uh man warm."

Severus looked up seeing the figure of a woman walking the coast; the surf just high enough to spray her with a fine mist. Her red scarf whipped wildly in the wind, competing for attention with the bushiest mane he had ever had the misfortune to come across. He took a sip of his drink and contemplated her through the glass.

No. That wasn't right. There was one other, a student, who had a mane as bushy if not more so than the woman walking by the sea.

He wondered if she survived.

He knew the Dark Lord was dead. He needed only the proof of his mark.

When the Dark Lord fell the first time, the mark was always a shadowy gray, and then it had gradually darkened to black on the night he had come back to his full power. Now, the mark was completely gone, leaving only a white imprint of where it had been. Easy enough to cover up. Easy enough to ignore.

And he had also had the proof of Albus's letter which had arrived via Fawkes of course. The letter never would have done had the dark bastard still been alive; in _that_ Severus could trust.

He watched as the young woman hunched her shoulders against the wind and headed for the pub. Ah, now this would be interesting. Severus wasn't joking when he said Porthdinllaen bred isolation. Few were the visitors to this lonely stretch of land. Toby, the bar keep, quickly grabbed a dubiously clean towel and began wiping down his 'best' table. Severus rolled his eyes. Toby never did anything more than he had to, never went out of his way more than necessary in order to get a sale.

By putting forth this much effort, the man was positively besotted.

The pub door opened letting in a blast of arctic chill. The young woman adorned to the hilt in winter garb had the red scarf piled to her chin, obscuring the lower half of her face. And that wild mane quite covered the upper. Toby gestured grandly and smiled, baring missing and mossy teeth. To her credit, she did not falter, but headed towards the table he'd indicated, and Severus was disappointed when she sat with her back to him, facing the sea just as he was.

He knew it was pathetic.

But for a moment. Just a moment, he would have liked to have pretended the young woman was, in fact, sitting with him; his mind mentally deleting the space and extra table between them, even if it was only an illusion. He could have surreptitiously taken in her every detail, absorbed her for mental re-creation later. She would never have known he was staring.

But as it was… at least he could still hear her.

"An' wha' would a fi'e lassie li'e ye b' doin' in sooch a pla' as thi' on sooch a cold day?"

"Hot tea if you've any and a measure of drambuie, please." Her voice was soft and quiet, slightly husky in deference to the chill.

Severus liked it immediately.

However, she had ignored the barkeep's question.

"Alrigh' lassie. Anythi' ta warm oop ye insides?"

"No, thank you. Just the drink." She finished unwinding the scarf from around her neck and placed it on the back of her chair. For a small moment, Severus could view her in profile. Long lashes, petite nose, a frown marring the cupid's bow of her mouth. She was young, her face having just lost the rounded 'baby fat' of adolescence and settling into that of womanhood. Her jaw was well-defined, her chin ending in a stubborn point.

Lovely.

Taking another idle sip, he wondered what color her irises were. Tilting his head slightly to one side, he took in the tawny color of her bushy mane.

Brown. They would have to be brown. No other color would suit.

He watched as Toby sat the woman's drinks on the table and left her alone. She poured the dram into her cup of tea, and stirring slightly, took a sip. Severus did as well, administering a cool kiss to his glass, wishing for just a moment it was the unknown woman's lips he was savoring.

Pathetic.

He was truly pathetic… and lonely.

For many long moments, Severus studied the woman as she studied the surf. _What did she see?_ he wondered. For although the spot was beautiful, although it was visually striking to observe, he did not think her mind was focused on the susurrations of the sea. No. Her mind was occupied with far graver matters if the hunch of her shoulders and the occasional tapping of the toe of her boot were anything to go by. She picked up her cup. He did as well.

It was becoming a ritual of sorts.

At length, Toby approached her again. "Ef ye'v come here a' low tide, lassie, ye need ta ge' a moove on. T' tide weel b' com'n in fash'." Severus mentally cursed the bar keep for disturbing their interlude. But he did have a point. The light in the already dim tavern was growing even more so, and if the young woman wanted a safe crossing from this backwater place towards civilization, she had better go.

Finishing her tea, she rose and quickly donned her bulky coat and scarf. Severus did the same, throwing a measure of bills on the table and making his way quietly out of the pub before the young woman had made it out the door. Quickly, he hid himself from view as he watched her trudge away from the village and toward the crossing point.

Disillusioning himself, he followed her hunched form, sometimes barely able to discern her small frame in the gathering gloam.

Half a mile from where she would cross, Severus watched as the young woman stopped. He stopped as well, straining to see what she was doing. His eyes widened as he saw her surreptitiously glance around and then pull a long stick of wood from the pocket of her long coat. With a wave, she turned and was gone.

The young woman was a witch.

.

.

.

A/N: Don't know if I've done a disclaimer yet, but not mine, no money, only friends. Hugs to all.

-k


	3. Simon Templar

Chapter 2— Simon Templar

.

.

.

He arrived back home to find a flurry of owls resting on his stoop. Gathering the correspondences, he made note of the colored stationary and their triage. Those in yellow were routine status updates, the orange were incident reports, and the red were emergencies. Fortunately, there were no emergencies to be seen today. Only yellow and a few orange.

There were also two in green.

Green were new patients: new puzzles to solve.

Severus, or Simon rather, had been employed by the staff of St. Mungo's as a specialist consultant on their most challenging cases. There was a reason, other than the much craved-for isolation, that Albus had thought to locate him here.

He was situated very close to the St. Mungo's extended ward for the incurable.

Albus did not want him idle, a stipulation in which Severus whole-heartedly agreed. And he knew the man he had served, scorned, and murdered had tailored this unique position just for him. For the Janus-Thickey ward in London housed only a fraction of those patients afflicted with such sever spell, curse, and potions' damage that they needed a lifetime of around the clock care.

In return for providing standard, and some not-so-standard potions, and to be on-call should new cases and emergencies arise, he received a stipend from St. Mungo's each month to offset the cost of his experimentation, living expenses, and research. He did not need the money, but it felt good to be earning a wage that was, for once, not lining the coffers of a cause in which he abjectly didn't believe. And he felt truly of use, not the futility of which most his life had become for so many years while teaching.

Agnus Forthwright, his last patient, had been placed in the secluded ward of St. Mungo's due to a potion's misshap involving polyjuice and dog hair. The woman had spent years of her life covered in fur and unable to communicate except by barking like a dog.

Severus remembered another young woman in a similar predicament with cat fur. Her treatment and cure had actually led to Mrs. Forthwright's recovery. For now that he had the time and dedication, he was able to research and innovate solutions that had been stymieing others for years.

In between cases, he worked on new innovations in treatment and therapy for those long-term residents in the hospital's care as well as researched and published articles for various periodicals and journals. After all, the world of academia still appealed even if his alias would garner the credit and not himself.

Simon Templar.

Albus had chosen the name intentionally.

It was the name of a fictional character found in a series of British muggle novels; not that many witches or wizards would know that. The man was a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from and occasionally killing those with a lower moral code than himself. He was considered by all to be brilliant, cunning, and—perhaps his most important quality—chameleon-like. For the man would adopt and discard personas with each new novel presented.

He remembered a conversation he'd had once with Albus, only a few years into his tenure at Hogwarts.

They had been drinking tea in the Headmaster's office, discussing the cases of Frank and Alice Longbottom, their treatment, and prognosis, and Albus had interrupted him by saying, "—you know you could have been anything, Severus. _Anything_." He had met those piercing blue orbs that were filled with such earnest sadness for him, and Severus's own had filled with hate and resentment.

At the time, he had thought the old man was trying to rub salt into an already festering wound, and his acerbic reply reflected it. "Yes, headmaster. Privileged _me_ for having at such a young age as this attained the highest epoch of professional success in being employed here at Hogwarts, trying to drum knowledge into the next generation of dunderheads; this being an exercise in futility I assure you."

Albus's jaw had hardened at his words, and the old man's eyes had lost their customary twinkle. His voice, however, never lost its 'knowing' omniscience when he said, "We are all of us a summation of our choices, Severus. And you are no exception. Some might say yours is a higher calling."

Severus had finished his tea in a gulp and stood, all the better to look down his nose at the old man as he replied, "Yes, and some might consider it to be the epitome of perdition, headmaster. Albus, I have much for which to atone, but I am no saint."

That had been the last Severus had ever heard Albus wax poetic about his so-called _higher calling_.

Until he saw the name Albus had chosen.

Simon Templar— _The Saint_. A man capable of adopting any persona and remaking himself as he saw fit. The name was a broad hint. In order to follow Albus' wishes for a new start, Severus needed to remake himself into the man he always wanted to be.

The wizarding world at large knew Simon Templar as a well-acclaimed, if reclusive, Potions Master with experience in the fields of the dark arts, curse-breaking, and spell damage. Albus had even seen fit to plant a few suppressed memories in the minds of key staff at St. Mungo's concerning Severus/ Simon's past. Severus' knowledge and experience of the Dark Arts ensured Albus' claims were not just palaver and snake oil. And also, the magical world respected Simon Templar and his contributions to it.

Yes, Simon Templar had become the man Severus Snape had always wanted to be.

.

.

.

Absently lighting the fire and going to his desk, Severus picked up his quill and began making note of the changes in status as well as prognosis of each of his patients.

His altered appearance, the guise he adopted when he had to attend an emergency, or, by necessity, delivered potions, was very much like that of his natural self. Severus would still dress in unrelieved black. However the long, almost Priest-like robes he wore as a Hogwarts professor were a thing of the past as they would identify him at ten paces.

Instead, he wore the robes of a healer dyed black with the Potions Mastery insignia of a caduceus rising from a cauldron placed on his lapel. His face was altered in the eyes of others to become less memorable, less striking. His nose less protuberant. His eyes a neutral shade of unremarkable hazel instead of their piercing black.

And his hair, now thanks to the charm, colored an unremarkable dull brown, was always drawn back into a neat queue at the nape of his neck. Although the characteristic greasiness still remained.

His voice, however, needed no alteration; Nagini had taken care of that quite neatly.

He still did exercises to strengthen his throat and vocal chords. However, the intonation, the commanding, silky voice that could mesmerize and enthrall an unruly classroom or hiss a blistering rebuke was a thing of the past. One of the many pounds of flesh his mistakes had cost him.

Summoning a pot of tea, Severus quietly worked through the correspondences from late afternoon into early evening, saving the green ones for last.

Finishing the last of the orange pile, Severus summoned the owls, and sent them winging. The green could wait until after dinner.

He looked up. It had grown quite dark, and shadows had lengthened throughout the room lending it an eerie tranquil quality. His favorite part of day—the gloaming. The twilight peace that descended just before day gave way to night. He let the measure of peace and contentment he felt steal over him feeling quite at home. All the same, he turned on the wizarding radio, and let the strains of Liszt's _Love Dream_ fill the house's silence.

Bachelorhood had suited the solitary man. After all, this was all he had known. But this isolation, this was something entirely different. Although his life at Hogwarts had been insular and solitary, he had not lacked for human presence, or the instinctual reassurance it brought.

At its absence, he found he hungered for it.

After seventeen years of non-stop chatter, crying, whining, complaining, and raucous laughter, Severus found himself listening, his ears straining for sound. And his house—the house Albus had tailored specifically for his spy's retirement—had become a kind of mausoleum: a place to hide, to die. To hole up and bury himself from the world.

Severus paused in his dinner preparation, closing his eyes to savor the particular trill of hands running down the keyboard as Liszt's work came to its conclusion.

A woman would help fill the silence. She would not have to be too chatty. That, he felt sure, he could not take. But a quiet, soft-spoken woman perhaps humming along while they worked to prepare a meal together would be quite a welcome change.

Perhaps that soft-spoken woman from the pub? The woman who happened to be a witch… and what a mystery to solve.

Severus was not one to believe in coincidence or acts of fate. He _had_ known Albus Dumbledore after all. The man had been a master strategist, able to see all the pieces on the board, their varied strengths and weaknesses, and plan accordingly. For every move made in the war effort, Albus Dumbledore was five moves ahead.

But he had been mistaken when he thought to give Severus his heart's desire. He had occupation and industry but no companionship. He had money but nothing and no one on which to spend it. And these long-buried, dormant thoughts, which up until a few weeks ago were all but non-existent, had begun to assert themselves with a vengeance.

Taking up his fork, Severus began to methodically eat, his mind churning.

He could honestly say in the last seventeen years, he'd had absolutely no longing for any kind of romantic entanglement whatsoever. For how could one, when one is serving two masters, each capable of great cruelty, give thought to long-term longevity let alone forming any kind of lasting bond?

His sexual urges were suppressed quite neatly with autoerotic stimulation and a liberal use of occlumency. Barring that, a visit to Nocturne Alley with polyjuice when necessary took care of any lingering baser need.

But what he wanted now wasn't just sexual. Although, there would be value, he was sure, in the act itself.

No.

He was looking for companionship; someone to hear when she puttered around his house, someone who would fill his lonely home with sound.

Yes. That would do.

For now.

.

.

.

A/N: The holidays are over, and I can get back to writing again… and oh, how I long to be writing again! I think it was New Year's Eve, and my three step-sons were fighting over their new game system, the dogs were barking at the neighbors as they shot off fireworks, my husband was cooking chicken, and it was filling the house up with smoke causing the smoke alarm to go off and having the dogs bark more… deep breath that I decided I was DONE with the holidays and needed a vacation from my Christmas vacation. I could only look longingly towards my laptop.

But now… now this time is MINE (and yours, of course, dear reader) Huzzah! I do hope everyone had a good break, and I look forward to posting more updates soon.

Cheers!

-K


End file.
